Achonu dismisses postponement of Imo rerun as laughable

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP candidate in last Saturday's botched election for the Okigwe North Senatorial seat, Athan Nneji Achonu, aka Agu otu aka has dismissed the eleventh hour postponement of the election and those of some state House of Assembly seats as laughable.

Already, the Imo State chapter of the PDP has addressed a press conference in which it fingered the state government, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and security agencies for complicity in aborting the rerun election.

An angry Chief Nnamdi Anyaehie at the press conference castigated the Rochas Okorocha government for scuttling the election.

“The postponement of the scheduled polls was the handiwork of the state government, whose top officials recruited miscreants and street urchins and stormed INEC premises midday with dangerous weapons and blocked the entrance gate with a heavy duty truck.

“It beats our imagination and the minds of all right thinking individuals, how such an ugly incident could successfully be accomplished in the presence of fully armed security personnel, including soldiers, and yet nobody was arrested.”

A non governmental organization, the Legislative Watch also accused Okorocha of masterminding the cancelation of the rerun election.

In a press statement signed by its Executive Secretary, Hon. Ngozika Ihuoma, the Legislative Watch expressed shock how government officials led irate youths to barricade INEC gate, which led to the elections being postponed.

“Why must INEC dance to the ugly tune of the APC because the Governor and his political party are afraid that the PDP was having an upper hand in the contest? This is no longer the practice of democracy," he observed.

In an apparent admittance of complicity in the storming of the INEC office in Owerri, the government through the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Okorocha, Mr. Sam Onwuemeodo, said; “it  has come to the knowledge of the state Government that youths operating under the aegis of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Youths, stormed the Owerri office of INEC as early as 7.00a.m. Friday,February 19, 2016, to protest over certain developments with regard to the re-run election for Okigwe zone Senatorial seat and two state constituencies in the state.”

Okorocha’s spokesman however failed to explain the presence of some government appointees who were seen directing the activities of the violent youths.